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I'm pretty sure not having kids would have a far larger impact.

• mathgeek 3y ago
  The environmental impact of having children is mostly attributed to the children, though. You don’t reduce your own impact much by not having children, by that measure. You do reduce overall impact in the short term, naturally.
  • deeviant 3y ago
    A child does not decide to be born, the parents do that (with outside pressure from society as a whole, either for or against depending). A couple that has 10 children obviously has a enormously higher environmental impact than a couple that has two. Which brings to my original point: It doesn't matter if the whole world goes vegan if the population raises to compensate for the "vegan savings", thus population control is by far more important than veganism. You can have X number carnivores live in world responsibly or Y > X number of vegans, but if you don't limit the population of either to the responsible carrying capacity of the world, you haven't really achieved anything. Also, vegetarians capture the majority of the ecological benefits of the lower environmental impact of nutritional lifestyles and framing it as vegan or not is probably not helpful.
    • mathgeek 3y ago
      No argument here. I was only stating how attribution occurs when reading studies.